"Slumdog Millionaire may have been thrown bouquets by western critics
and audiences, but brickbats are flying in its direction in India.

Although the film was a big winner at Sunday's Golden Globes and is seen as a frontrunner for the Oscars, Amitabh Bachchan, Bollywood's
top actor and perhaps one of the most famous faces in the world, has
voiced bitter comments about the movie's portrayal of India.

Writing on his blog,
Bachchan said that "if SM projects India as [a] third-world, dirty,
underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among
nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly
exists and thrives even in the most developed nations."

There has been some debate about the "Indian-ness" of the movie. Slumdog Millionaire was directed by the British film-maker Danny Boyle,
best known for the noir comedy of Trainspotting. The film is based on a
novel, Q&A, by the Indian writer and diplomat Vikas Swarup, and
adapted by Simon Beaufoy, the British screenwriter of The Full Monty.

Bachchan
added that an Indian director making a western-style film might not
meet with the attention lavished on Slumdog Millionaire: "It's just
that the SM idea, authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically
put together by a westerner, gets creative globe recognition. The other
would perhaps not."

It's an interesting point, but in general, a big win for this movie seems to be a big win for Bollywood down the road.